WASHINGTON — The United States government announced this week that it has fully solved the complex ethical, technical, and geopolitical challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence, completing the work in approximately one afternoon by issuing an executive order directing federal agencies to stop calling it that. Effective immediately, the technology formerly known as Artificial Intelligence will be designated "Super Intelligence" across all federal communications, procurement documents, and the lanyards of conference attendees at events no one outside the Beltway will read about.
The order, which applies to agencies ranging from the Department of Defense to the National Weather Service, does not alter the underlying code, training data, computing infrastructure, or documented tendency of these systems to confidently fabricate federal case law. What it does alter, officials confirmed, is the paperwork, which the Bureau of Administrative Modernization described as "a significant win for the American people, or at minimum, for the people who print the forms."
"Super Intelligence conveys strength," said an unnamed senior official, speaking on condition that no one ask any follow-up questions. "When our adversaries hear 'Artificial Intelligence,' they think: limitations, hallucinations, that thing that wrote a cover letter for my nephew and listed 'Microsoft Word' under Special Skills. When they hear 'Super Intelligence,' they think: we have done something. We have not said what. But we have done it."
The rebrand follows a verified and genuinely remarkable fact: the original executive order on AI signed in 2023 was itself 111 pages long and contained the word "ensure" 71 times, ensuring, technically, nothing. The new order addressing Super Intelligence runs considerably shorter, a development the Bureau of Regulatory Streamlining called "proof that government can move fast when the task requires less reading."
Federal IT contractors have been given 90 days to update all references in existing systems, a timeline described by one procurement officer as "ambitious," by another as "hilarious," and by the relevant software itself as "I'm sorry, I don't understand the question, but here is a confident summary of a policy that does not exist." Agencies that have already deployed AI tools in public-facing services were reminded that those tools are now Super Intelligence tools, and that citizens interacting with them should feel correspondingly more impressed.
The nomenclature shift has drawn cautious enthusiasm from the technology industry, where several major firms noted that "Super Intelligence" aligns well with existing marketing materials, pending they are allowed to keep the existing marketing materials and simply underline one word. A coalition of AI researchers responded with a joint statement that opened with a paragraph of measured concern before trailing off into what sources described as a long, tired silence.
Historians of federal branding noted that the maneuver is not without precedent. The Department of War became the Department of Defense in 1947, a change that left the wars themselves administratively unaffected. The phrase "Enhanced Interrogation" enjoyed a productive run in the early 2000s. French Fries briefly became Freedom Fries in the congressional cafeteria, a period now studied in three graduate seminars and zero policy schools. "Renaming is a proud tradition," said a fellow at the Center for Governance Nomenclature, an institution that did not exist before this paragraph. "It signals seriousness without requiring any."
As of press time, seventeen federal agencies had updated their websites, four had accidentally introduced the phrase "Super Intelligence (formerly Artificial Intelligence, formerly Machine Learning, formerly Automation, formerly Just A Spreadsheet)," and one had gone offline for scheduled maintenance, which the Bureau of Uptime Assurance confirmed was also being renamed.